What would happen if the robots turned against us?
By MICHAEL HANLON, Science Editor
Daily Mail
27th April 2007
Scary: A Cyberman from a 2006 episode of the BBC's "Dr Who". The word "robot" is Czech for "to work" and was first used in 1920 as a word to also describe a mechanical, humanoid slave
In Japan, they work as carers and look eerily lifelike ... but what would happen if the robots turned against us? And could robots used in the future by the American Army have a tragic effect on the British Army?
No invention in the past century has better evoked the uneasy relationship we have with technology - a mixture of awe, huge (and usually unfulfilled) expectations and some fear.
Japanese robotics expert Hiroshi Ishiguro (right) unveiled Germinoid (left), a robot doppelganger of himself
A rather silly report commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry talked about giving robots "human" rights - including the right to vote, to receive income support, the provision of council housing and even robot healthcare.
The idea that your vacuum cleaner might be able to sue you for not giving it a lunch break is the kind of lunatic thinking that gives boffinry a bad name.
No wonder proper scientists have queued up this week to condemn the report as "shallow" and "poorly informed".
The truth is that we can dismiss - at least for now - talk of giving machines the vote.
Instead, we should worry just where the technology of robotics is leading us humans, because, in the future, the dark side of machine intelligence will make itself felt with increasing force.
So why should we be worried by a technology that seems to have, so far, brought us little more than some clever toys and machines that can weld cars and clean pools?
Robots, like so many modern inventions, began life in science fiction novels.
The modern robot was "invented" by a writer - in this case, by the Czech Karel Capek, whose 1920 play, Rossum's Universal Robots, introduced the idea of the intelligent, humanoid, mechanical slave.
In fact, the original concept of a robot was much older than this.
In Greek mythology, Vulcan (the god of metal work) created mechanical servants, including intelligent female slaves and automated furniture.
But it was Capek who not only coined the word (from the Czech verb "to work") but defined what most of us think when we envisage a robot.
Most people believe a robot has to look like a human, but this is not the case.
All it needs to be is artificial, capable of "intelligent" behaviour, preferably able to move and, most importantly, be capable of being re-programmed to carry out a wide variety of tasks with a degree of autonomy.
The idea that robots may also possess a sense of self-awareness has been a mainstay of science fiction since the days of Capek.
It was Isaac Asimov who explored most fully the possible future relationship between man and intelligent machines.
In his books, the issue of "robot rights" was first aired, as was the thorny question of how humans could be protected should the machines decide to turn on their makers.
Asimov's writings were used as the basis of the recent movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith.
It also dealt with the famous "three laws" of robotics that were designed to provide a fail-safe way of protecting humanity from machines with their own agenda.
Each robot, Asimov said, must be programmed never to kill or injure a human (or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm).
Also, it had to always obey orders (unless these caused it to contravene the first law) and finally to protect itself (unless, again, in doing so, it contravenes either of the first two laws).
Intriguingly, the film explored the concept of what would happen if an intelligent machine decided that, in order to protect humanity, it had to seize control from its biological superiors.
However, in real life, no one has yet made a sentient machine. We have no idea how phenomena such as consciousness, morality, love or anger are generated in human brains.
And far less idea how to impart these things into computer software and silicon chips. Hence the scepticism about "robot rights".
Many experts question the whole idea of building a humanoid robot at all.
As one expert, based in the U.S., told me: "If you just want a servant to cook and look after the garden, there are plenty of Mexicans. Why buy a hugely expensive machine?"
Leaving aside that questionable suggestion, there will always be a demand for human-like robots - even if there are no more than curiosities.
Hiroshi Ishiguro, a robotics professor at Osaka University, in Japan, has built some remarkably lifelike robots, with latex skin, which can replicate human facial gestures with impressive authenticity.
More and more aspects of our society are being "roboticised".
This means an explosive growth of robot-like artificially-intelligent autonomous systems - such as those which answer call centre phones or fly our planes.
Most of these are hugely useful. But more worryingly, there is the possibility that some of these "dumb" robots may be harmful.
In Japan, which is facing a demographic time-bomb as fewer babies are being born and more people are living into their dotage, the authorities are looking to use robots to look after old people.
I saw the prototype of one of these machines in action a few years ago, at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
A machine called "Nursebot" trundled around old people's homes, checking patients had taken their medication, reminding them to do so if they had not and contacting their (human) doctors if any vital signs were amiss.
The danger with such developments is that we will be tempted - on grounds of cost - to consign the care of some of society's most vulnerable members to machines.
At best, this could be terribly dehumanising for the old folk, at worst, something could go wrong with the programming.
But it is in the military sphere that robots can make the greatest impact.
In the U.S., the Pentagon is spending billions of dollars on research projects with the aim of producing a new race of autonomous fighting machines.
The aim is to replace a third of America's fighting vehicles with the machines in the next 20 years.
What we will see are robotic planes carrying out reconnaissance, robotic troop carriers and tankers travelling across the desert and robotic submarines patrolling the Gulf. And, inevitably, fighting machines.
The question is then, who gives the orders to shoot? Is it is a soldier, in a command post miles away?
Or is the aim to programme these machines to make their own decisions? Then we are into a whole new ball game.
"They don't get hungry," Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon told the New York Times recently.
"They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders.
"They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans?
Yes."
But, unfortunately, as we have seen, in recent conflicts, even welltrained soldiers can make tragic errors in the heat of battle.
I certainly wouldn't want to be a British squaddie on the sands of Iraq with robot-controlled American gunships patrolling overhead.
dailymail.co.uk
By MICHAEL HANLON, Science Editor
Daily Mail
27th April 2007
Scary: A Cyberman from a 2006 episode of the BBC's "Dr Who". The word "robot" is Czech for "to work" and was first used in 1920 as a word to also describe a mechanical, humanoid slave
In Japan, they work as carers and look eerily lifelike ... but what would happen if the robots turned against us? And could robots used in the future by the American Army have a tragic effect on the British Army?
No invention in the past century has better evoked the uneasy relationship we have with technology - a mixture of awe, huge (and usually unfulfilled) expectations and some fear.
Japanese robotics expert Hiroshi Ishiguro (right) unveiled Germinoid (left), a robot doppelganger of himself
A rather silly report commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry talked about giving robots "human" rights - including the right to vote, to receive income support, the provision of council housing and even robot healthcare.
The idea that your vacuum cleaner might be able to sue you for not giving it a lunch break is the kind of lunatic thinking that gives boffinry a bad name.
No wonder proper scientists have queued up this week to condemn the report as "shallow" and "poorly informed".
The truth is that we can dismiss - at least for now - talk of giving machines the vote.
Instead, we should worry just where the technology of robotics is leading us humans, because, in the future, the dark side of machine intelligence will make itself felt with increasing force.
So why should we be worried by a technology that seems to have, so far, brought us little more than some clever toys and machines that can weld cars and clean pools?
Robots, like so many modern inventions, began life in science fiction novels.
The modern robot was "invented" by a writer - in this case, by the Czech Karel Capek, whose 1920 play, Rossum's Universal Robots, introduced the idea of the intelligent, humanoid, mechanical slave.
In fact, the original concept of a robot was much older than this.
In Greek mythology, Vulcan (the god of metal work) created mechanical servants, including intelligent female slaves and automated furniture.
But it was Capek who not only coined the word (from the Czech verb "to work") but defined what most of us think when we envisage a robot.
Most people believe a robot has to look like a human, but this is not the case.
All it needs to be is artificial, capable of "intelligent" behaviour, preferably able to move and, most importantly, be capable of being re-programmed to carry out a wide variety of tasks with a degree of autonomy.
The idea that robots may also possess a sense of self-awareness has been a mainstay of science fiction since the days of Capek.
It was Isaac Asimov who explored most fully the possible future relationship between man and intelligent machines.
In his books, the issue of "robot rights" was first aired, as was the thorny question of how humans could be protected should the machines decide to turn on their makers.
Asimov's writings were used as the basis of the recent movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith.
It also dealt with the famous "three laws" of robotics that were designed to provide a fail-safe way of protecting humanity from machines with their own agenda.
Each robot, Asimov said, must be programmed never to kill or injure a human (or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm).
Also, it had to always obey orders (unless these caused it to contravene the first law) and finally to protect itself (unless, again, in doing so, it contravenes either of the first two laws).
Intriguingly, the film explored the concept of what would happen if an intelligent machine decided that, in order to protect humanity, it had to seize control from its biological superiors.
However, in real life, no one has yet made a sentient machine. We have no idea how phenomena such as consciousness, morality, love or anger are generated in human brains.
And far less idea how to impart these things into computer software and silicon chips. Hence the scepticism about "robot rights".
Many experts question the whole idea of building a humanoid robot at all.
As one expert, based in the U.S., told me: "If you just want a servant to cook and look after the garden, there are plenty of Mexicans. Why buy a hugely expensive machine?"
Leaving aside that questionable suggestion, there will always be a demand for human-like robots - even if there are no more than curiosities.
Hiroshi Ishiguro, a robotics professor at Osaka University, in Japan, has built some remarkably lifelike robots, with latex skin, which can replicate human facial gestures with impressive authenticity.
More and more aspects of our society are being "roboticised".
This means an explosive growth of robot-like artificially-intelligent autonomous systems - such as those which answer call centre phones or fly our planes.
Most of these are hugely useful. But more worryingly, there is the possibility that some of these "dumb" robots may be harmful.
In Japan, which is facing a demographic time-bomb as fewer babies are being born and more people are living into their dotage, the authorities are looking to use robots to look after old people.
I saw the prototype of one of these machines in action a few years ago, at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
A machine called "Nursebot" trundled around old people's homes, checking patients had taken their medication, reminding them to do so if they had not and contacting their (human) doctors if any vital signs were amiss.
The danger with such developments is that we will be tempted - on grounds of cost - to consign the care of some of society's most vulnerable members to machines.
At best, this could be terribly dehumanising for the old folk, at worst, something could go wrong with the programming.
But it is in the military sphere that robots can make the greatest impact.
In the U.S., the Pentagon is spending billions of dollars on research projects with the aim of producing a new race of autonomous fighting machines.
The aim is to replace a third of America's fighting vehicles with the machines in the next 20 years.
What we will see are robotic planes carrying out reconnaissance, robotic troop carriers and tankers travelling across the desert and robotic submarines patrolling the Gulf. And, inevitably, fighting machines.
The question is then, who gives the orders to shoot? Is it is a soldier, in a command post miles away?
Or is the aim to programme these machines to make their own decisions? Then we are into a whole new ball game.
"They don't get hungry," Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon told the New York Times recently.
"They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders.
"They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans?
Yes."
But, unfortunately, as we have seen, in recent conflicts, even welltrained soldiers can make tragic errors in the heat of battle.
I certainly wouldn't want to be a British squaddie on the sands of Iraq with robot-controlled American gunships patrolling overhead.
dailymail.co.uk
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